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Friday, September 28, 2012

I'm pleased to announce I'll have an essay in Black Mountain Institute's journal ABOUT PLACE--the Peaks and Valley issue. From their website: "Black Earth Institute supports the artist as prophet and visionary who
helps create a society attuned to earth’s rhythms and to the rights of
all people."

Yup, that's me.

Actually in my piece "Ostrog Monastery" my husband and I take a crazy excursion from our hostel in Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia, formerly the Balkans) up into the mountainous inner spine of that small nation in search of . . . read the essay. Out soon. I'll post.

Until then Grace Hertenstein has 2 new stories OUT NOW. You can DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE
Her piece is called Foxcrow Hill and is best described as Americana. In the story a young man goes traveling, train hopping, hoping to forget a childhood friend that he might be a little bit in love with. Here is a description of Wayfarer from their website:

The Wayfarer is released twice a year,
on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. We currently publish both poetry
and prose. In each issue we feature travel writing, short stories,
interviews, original art and photography. We seek to explore the
spiritual progression we are currently experiencing as individuals and a
global community.A wayfarer is one who chooses to take up
a long journey on foot.

Also check out Inkaputure from the UK where Grace has written a story from the perspective of a cupboard. From the Editor's Forward:

Even though our first two stories this
issue could not perhaps be any different in terms of their protagonists,
they are connected by a common concern – that of speech versus silence.
Thus, To Be a Coatrackuses defamiliarisation to take the reader into the ‘mind’ of a neglected cupboard dreaming of hallway stardom, whilst The Widow of Charrouxcontrasts
the garrulity of its story teller ­– speaking to an invisible audience –

Monday, September 24, 2012

“Let
us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might
more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if
we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.” ― Christian Wiman

I’ve written here at my blog numerous times about funding
for the arts. Endowments for the humanities. In other words: a handout.

A piece on NPR this a.m. caught my attention—so many
musicians are gaining an audience because of Spotify, YouTube, and other mediums made
possible through the Internet. Yet the Internet is killing them. With
downloading and digital sharing royalties are siphoned or greatly diminished.
It’s the same for publishing. Without the Internet I wouldn’t have had 30
stories published. If I had to rely on print journals alone maybe I’d have 2
stories out there. But with the advent of hand-held digital devices, more and
more people are reading from the screen—thus flash is growing in popularity. It
is a form perfectly suited for those reading off screens. We used to call short
shorts bathroom material now it’s all the rage. 750 words or less is what
editors are crying out for. Problem is we’re just not getting paid for it. Not
when free content abounds.

So, yeah, I’m a victim. I’m looking for my cut of writer
welfare.

Maybe that’s why the whole 47% thing last week hit me in the
gut. Some of us are working really really hard, yet not getting ahead, or at
least not raking in millions. Also I pay taxes.

Thus I was really excited to discover a new blog started by
Dinty Moore (not the stew) a writer, instructor, and publisher of creative
non-fiction called We Represent the 47%

So far there are 48 contributors each with their own story
of how they built that, and how they also helped others to build. It is mutual.
Symbiotic. We’re all helping each other, and that’s something that I’ve always
found distinctive of Americans. At one minute we can tear each other apart, but
when disaster strikes, towers fall we all manage to come together to help one
another. I found myself drawn in by each of the entries, mini-memoirs,
realizing that at one point or another we’ve all been there for another person.
The stories made me feel grateful and proud to live where I live—even though I
think by the end of this election cycle I am going to be SICK AND TIRED of
political ads.

So let us go to poetry, slow down and live one moment at a
time. It is almost impossible to be open to life and at the same time closed
off. A heart full of appreciation cannot be at the same time critical.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Included in this issue is Shann Ray whose new short story collection American Masculine is part Job and part Psalms. He has an incredible way of writing description that marries the reader to the landscape--even an alien one made up of Montana, Spokane, and unnamed tribal lands. I recently read an article about him in Poets & Writers Magazine about his MFA process.

Gregory Spatz, who teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington
University, makes a case for why creative writing can be taught, holding
up Shann Ray as a shining example.

Apparently Ray was a hard read in draft form. I think I know a little bit about this--aka "I can relate." There are many times when you know where you want to go--it's the getting there that's the actual process of writing. People tell me--that would make a great story--yet they have no idea what makes a great story. An anecdote is not a great story. Two anecdotes does not make a great story. A great story doesn't even know why exactly it's great, but between the idea and the words comes a perfect alignment (Shann knows what I'm talking about) where after the 100th revision you arrive (maybe) at a great story.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My husband and I were sitting outside Wrigley Field waiting
for Bruce Springsteen to take the stage.

“Who?” I asked. Herbie had been dead for a decade—or at
least I thought.

We had been married maybe a month and were living in an old
house divided up into six apartments—some with shared bath. It was the early
80s in Chicago
in a neighborhood coming back from blight. The remnants were everywhere. In the
vacant lots, in the abandoned cars littering the vacant lots, in the boarded-up
buildings bordering the vacant lots. It was nothing to see punks walking the
sidewalks with tally-rags up to their mouths. At night the gangs came out with
baseball bats to beat the tar out of each other, the sky lit up with fires set
by landlords burning down those old buildings, the buildings subdivided, with
bathrooms down the hall.

Every morning I awoke to some new crisis, the ashes of the
night before. And the occasional body left in playlots long forsaken by kids.

We were in Chicago
doing the abstract work of community development, which sometimes just came
down to shoveling the sidewalks, grilling out with belligerent neighbors,
calling the police or firehouse when trouble broke out. We invited kids to play
inside our yard because the playlots were scary, filled with teens huffing
tally, swinging on swings and then knotting them by wrapping them over the top
bar.

After being raised in the suburbs, the inner city of Chicago sometimes felt
medieval.

And my husband and I lived outside the castle walls. It was
summer and our bedroom window was wide open. We tried to suck as much
circulation into the room as possible by creating a wind tunnel: one fan
pulling hot air in and another fan pointing out, as if to exhale. If we lay
perfectly still we might feel a breeze cooling the damp rags pressed against
our forehead. The only hope was in a tomorrow less hot.

While waiting for the heat to break we fell asleep.

I thought he had locked the door and he thought I had locked
the door. Apparently neither of us had because sometime in the middle of the
night, dense with the sound of whirring fans, Herbie sneaked in. To be fair—he
didn’t know where he was.

I awoke to a rustling. As I lay still I figured it was a
mouse, then I speculated something bigger, perhaps a cat had gotten in through
the open window—about nine feet off the ground. The sound was intermittent.
Right when I thought I’d imagined the whole thing, it would come again. I got
up to investigate.

As a child watching “The Mummy” or classic “Dracula” or some
other Saturday afternoon black- and white-TV movie I’d always chide the naïve
woman for opening her bedroom door or descending the castle steps in search of
who knew what. NO! I’d scream. Get back inside! Years later as a die-hard
feminist, I’d still scream—Go get a guy!

Yet there I was checking the screen in the window, prodding
the corners of our studio apartment. There weren’t too many places for the
sound to be coming from. So I returned to bed. A half hour later I heard it
again: a distinct groan.

This time I woke my husband up. “I’m hearing something.”

“A mouse?”

“No, bigger than that.”

“A rat?”

I pushed him out of the bed. “Go see.”

He did something I’d avoided doing; he turned on a small
desk lamp. There was a shuffling from the direction of the closet. I stayed in
the middle of the bed as if it were a life raft, in case a flood of Pied Piper
rats, cats, or mice tumbled out. My husband pushed the curtain to the closet
aside. He looked up. It’s a man, he stated as a matter of fact.

Oh. My. God. We had no cell phone. This was before cell
phones. I had no idea of how or where to get help. If I could I would have run
out of the room—except I’d have to cross to the other side to the door, past
the closet.

The man, who I could first tell had been sprawled on the
closet floor, was now standing upright, but leaning. I dove under a pile of
pillows. Visions of pillage and rape seized me. What if the man had a gun? A
knife! This was no black- and white-movie, but real life. I had no idea how
this story would end.

I heard my husband shout No! Don’t! and peeked. It looked as
if the intruder, obviously drunk, was trying to relieve himself in our closet!
My husband steered him out of the tight space, which in the dark might have
appeared to be the bathroom, and guided him to the door of our apartment, and
out into the hallway. He pointed the stranger to the bathroom down the hall.

Later we learned his name was Herbie. He’d been visiting one
of the other residents and gotten turned around. Much later than that the word
on the street was that he’d died in a violent fight—probably one of the nightly
scuffles that took place in front of our house. Either way, after that
terror-filled night we never saw him again.

Until the night of the Springsteen concert at Wrigley last
week, when we thought we saw him stumble drunkenly across the street, going
from garbage can to garbage can looking for beer cans to drain.

Not much had seemed to change in his life. For us—we were in
fact that evening celebrating 26 years of marriage, and that studio we’d first
lived in in the subdivided house had been torn down to make way for a condo
development. The whole neighborhood had undergone a make-over. Instead of
chain-link fences were landscaped hedges. Gone were the bars on the windows,
replaced with flower boxes. Even the playlot kitty-corner from our old house
had new play equipment enjoyed by toddlers and their caregivers. The swings now
move freely back and forth without the trauma of truant teenagers.

My husband reached for my hand, grasped it while we sat in
lawn chairs, waiting for the lights to go out and the band to come on and play
for the people inside the stadium, for the sounds of Bruce to float over the
walls to us and the other peasants sitting outside. “Happy anniversary,” my
husband whispered.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Young and Homeless

Craig Blankenhorn for The New York Times

Missy Race, 22, and her
10-month-old son, David Martinez, are living in transitional housing.
Because she is unable to afford daycare, it’s difficult for her to go on
job interviews: “If I bring David with me, I know I won’t get the job
because it’s unprofessional.”

By
CRAIG BLANKENHORN

Published: August 31, 2012

SADLY for the children across America who are homeless today, neither
presidential campaign is expected to pay much attention to them, with
big policy speeches or new ideas about improving their situation.

Multimedia

There are 1.6 million homeless children in the United States. I want to
be the witness to this, to provide evidence of their bleak condition. I
want to speak for the victimized children of our country who aren’t even
fully cognizant of their own poverty. Infants, young children and
teenagers are living on the streets, in hotel rooms and in their
parents’ cars, forsaken by bad luck. It is my hope that these
photographs will show this problem to those who are unaware or have done
their best to ignore this issue.

The families who were willing to share their stories made this project
possible. I have photographed them in cities around the country,
including Janesville and Beloit, Wis., Kissimmee, Fla., and in Essex
County, N.J.

Recently, I spent a week with homeless families in Tampa, Fla., site of
the Republican convention. The common refrain of the parents was this:
“It’s the kids — they don’t deserve this.”

Craig Blankenhorn is a
recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and has work
in the permanent collection at the Museum of the City of New York.

Fantastic Resource!

NEW!!! e-book edition

eBook Edition Has bonus Material

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Quick Bio

Jane Hertenstein is the author of Home is Where We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl’s Eyes (picture book), Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady (with Marie James), and Beyond Paradise (YA fiction). See BOOKS
She has taught mini courses in memoir at the university level as well as seminars at Cornerstone Festival, Prairie School of Writing. Jane is listed on the Illinois Artists Roster. Roster Artists are certified by the Illinois Arts Council to work in public schools introducing young people to the arts. She lives in Chicago where she facilitates a “happening” critique group.